Klarinet Archive - Posting 001012.txt from 2000/01

From: "Rien Stein" <rstein@-----.nl>
Subj: [kl] Re: why
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2000 07:53:53 -0500

It's quite amazing, how different ways can bring you to the same end.

When I was a child of some seven or eight years old, I wanted to learn an
instrument. But my mother had a brother-in-law who was a professional
teacher of many music instruments: piano, organ, saxophone, clarinet,
accordeon, mouth organ, and a few more.

Most important of all: My father couldn't stand him.

As a consequence, my parents didn't want me to go to him for music lessons.
But see someone else, when your own brother-in-law ... we are talking about
the early fifties in Europe, Elvis Presley was but a highschool student.

Over twenty five years after I still wanted to learn an instrument. At that
time I was a student of Mechanical Engineering. Just a year before I
graduated (M.Sc.) I discovered that when you join a wind band, you will have
the instrument free, as long as you are a member. I needed some time to
decide, whether I should take clarinet or hobo. And some day in the Eastern
German radio, Radio DDR, I heard the Weber Concertino, op 26. And there was
such a beautifull part in it ... A slow one I had a discussion about several
months ago with Tony Pay: it was played very slow, and actually in my
edition (Peters) of the concertino it says "Piu lento". I decided that that
was what I wanted to be able to play myself.

For that very simple reason I became a clarinet adapt. And I still think it
is the best choice I ever made in life, apart from deciding to get married
with the girl that is almost 28 years now my wife. Since I started to play
the clarinet, music has become more and more importan to me, the only thing
I regret about it is, that I cannot devote as much time to it as I would
like. If I play an hour my neighbours won't react, but if I play 62 minutes,
they will call me by telephone (our front doors are six meters apart), to
ask when I will stop. He studied the Funeral March by Chopin during four
years every day from six pm exactly (when the news began, you could regulate
your watch to it) till seven, or half past seven, or eight, and we never
complained about it. And often I don't manage to play at all. But they never
complained that I did NOT play a full week ...

And now I am 56, and despite a rather irregular scheme of studying still
feel I make progress. Just a couple of weeks ago I played the Rhapsody on
Dutch folksongs by the late Hungarian pianist and composer Geza Frid the
first time in such a way that I thought it was rather satisfying, after I
have been studying it in irregular intervals during 15 or 20 years. Raising
another question, but that I will pose in a different mailing.

Rien

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